Taiwan is looking for investors to help it build its own satellite Internet system, similar to the Starlink system that played an important role during the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This should help it defend against a possible attack by China, the Financial Times reports, citing its own sources.
Talks are currently underway with several local and international investors to finance a project by the Taiwan Space Agency (TASA) to develop the existing constellation of satellites, according to three sources familiar with the situation.
“We look at the Russian invasion of Ukraine and how Starlink was used very successfully. Our main concern is … social resilience, such as allowing journalists to broadcast video … to an international audience even during a large-scale disaster,” said Audrey Tan, Taiwan’s minister of digital technology.
She also added that this system will support telephone and video conferencing.
According to Tan, it will take several years for the TASA project to be launched. Before that, the ministry is experimenting with non-geostationary satellite receivers at 700 locations across Taiwan to guarantee bandwidth in the event of war or natural disaster.
Among the investors Taiwan has approached is Draper Associates, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm that was an early investor in SpaceX and Tesla.
The project is said to be part of Taiwan’s broader effort to build a communications infrastructure that could survive a Chinese attack. Beijing claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has increasingly threatened to use force to bring the country under its control.
With the help of such a satellite system, the Taiwanese authorities want to preserve the possibility of journalists’ work during a possible invasion, support telephone communication and video conferences.
Many industry experts are skeptical about the likely commercial prospects of the Taiwanese project in a market dominated by Starlink. The latter is the only satellite operator that has its own launch facilities – on SpaceX ships. In addition, dozens of startups are fighting for funds to fill the corresponding segment. According to one of the experts of Gartner Bill Ray (Bill Ray), in the end there will be 4-5 global providers – how Taiwan intends to position its project against their background is still unknown. According to other experts, small countries with their own groups can assert themselves in the market of low-Earth satellite groups: Japan, South Korea, Australia.
Taiwan has great potential and can also implement its own satellite project — satellites can be used for both commercial and military purposes. Experts specify that 120-150 satellites are needed to cover the region with communications, which will require considerable resources and rapid prototyping to build and put into operation.
